Athalaz
by shinrin-no-ookami
Summary: A story told from the point of view of a monster. I haven't seen this monster used in the canon series. The information is as correct to canon and real world as I can make it. I hope you enjoy the story.


Author's Note: This is another one-shot story. This one is told predominantly through the eyes of the monster. I expect there have been more than a few Monster POV stories but I haven't seen them yet so I decided to give it a shot. I don't really see a direct follow-up to this one but I'll probably write something else. If you're so inclined, let me know what you think of this one.

[-]

Athalaz never knew _mother_ 's name. It's entirely possible she didn't actually have a name. Athalaz, himself, was old as the humans reckoned things and his mother may have been far older. Speech did not come easily to her and she rarely spoke. All of this was muddled further by the many long years since he had last seen her. He was pretty sure she had been killed but he couldn't be entirely certain. His last memory of her was when she hid Ubilaz and Athalaz on the large, three-masted ship before _mother_ lead the hunters away. One of the small band of hunters had searched the ship but didn't find them and he took off after mother.

Before that time had come a long period of learning. Truth be told, Athalaz rarely spoke too. Words were not easy but he had learned quite a few of them over time. Both Athalaz and Ubilaz had learned something of the speech of the time through the dreams of the others; the "humans". Most often they would think of them as " _marōn_ " and, in time, Athalaz understood that this was not complementary. They never spoke too him and he only heard it in their innermost thoughts as they slept. It really had not mattered that it was not complementary. It simply was.

After their birth Athalaz and Ubilaz grew swiftly to a size and status where they could technically survive on their own but, for her own unknown reasons, _mother_ wanted more for them. She kept them from feeding off the humans indiscriminately. She taught them patience and cunning and nudged them towards the learning of the human words. The learning had been slow to begin with but, as he began to understand what she was doing Athalaz was an eager student. There had been mistakes but what he had learned had served him well in his long years.

Athalaz was just over a meter tall as humans measured. If his distance memory was at all reliable he'd estimate he was now half the height _mother_ had been. Perhaps that meant he was half as old as she had been? There was really no guide for him so it was little more than an idle thought. If he lived long enough he may figure it out for himself if he grew as tall as she had been. Considering his own appearance he glanced up from the unconscious man who's chest he was sitting atop and looked into a stand mirror across from the bed. Athalaz tilted his head a bit to the right as he contemplated his appearance. His dark skin was very unlike the pale skin of the sleeping man beneath him. His inhumanly thin frame and over-long, thin limbs bore a vague approximation of the human's body but were too different to pass as human. Not that Athalaz had ever wanted to be human. The thought had never crossed his mind. He was perhaps about to wonder about that very thing when the human twitched under Athalaz's taloned fingers. Athalaz's attention was immediately drawn back to the human and he began to feed.

As he fed Athalaz saw the human's thoughts. This human feared wolves. They chased him in his dreams, hunted him down, tore him apart. The human didn't die in his dreams but he lived on through unsurvivable amounts of dream pain. His heart raced. Sweat broke out on his skin. In the normal course of events he likely would have woken in a fright, screaming out in terror. Athalaz kept him suppressed and continued to feed. So lost was he in feeding he didn't hear the man's mate enter until her shrieks of terror pulled his attention away from the man. Faster than a human could move Athalaz was off the man and out the window of the simple log cabin and back into the safety of the night shadows outside.

From the safety of the woods he stopped and watched as the candles and fireplace of the house were lit bathing the interior in light. A short time later the man stepped outside clad in his long sleeping gown, candle in one hand and a blunderbuss held with practiced skill in the other. Unlike the human, Athalaz could see clearly in the dark. The human had a ghostly pallor and the sheen of sweat still glistened on his exposed skin. The human would live and perhaps Athalaz would be back to feed here again some day.

Many years later Athalaz finds himself standing in front of another mirror in another dark bedroom. He hasn't fed yet but he caught his reflection in a full-length mirror. This mirror of long ago was faded at the edges and the glass had ripples. This mirror is pristinely clear and offered back a perfect reflection. Within it Athalaz could see very little different about himself. He was perhaps several centimeters taller and had a few scars from close encounters. The hunters had gotten better largely due to better tools but Athalaz was still much faster than they and he never stayed to fight. Unlike Ubilaz.

Athalaz and Ubilaz still traveled together. They had been born together, grown together, and lived together. They were siblings and that was preferable to being alone. They hunted separately but always found each other before the rising sun and returned to their den. Ubilaz had more scars than Athalaz but was also a better fighter. In the last few years he had stopped two of the hunters who had attacked him rather than just flee.

A sudden sound pulled Athalaz away from his reflection. The sleeping human had begun to snore. Athalaz let out a very soft, wheezing sound that passed for laughter. The humans were always so loud and he found them amusing. Lately, in the last decade or so, he had taken to sneaking close in the evenings before they slept and watching them through their windows. They did such curious things and he had begun to wonder why. They used to stare at folded pieces of paper with writing on the. More often now they watched boxes with moving images on them that made other loud noises. They sometimes even stared at littler boxes of various sizes they held in their hands that had even tinier pictures. This did not provide food to them but they seemed obsessed with these various boxes.

Athalaz walked over to the sleeping human, a woman this time. Earlier he had watched as she had brushed out her long hair. Athalaz had no hair and lightly brushed his talons across the woman's hair. It had an interesting texture. Sometimes as he fed, he'd fidget with the human's hair leaving it in unintentional tangles. He'd almost certainly wind up doing that again as he fed off her dreams. The hunger was overtaking him and he fed. This woman dreamed of being in a large, flying tube high in the sky that was coming down. It had taken a while to puzzle out why this caused her so much terror. Athalaz had seem the tubes in the sky many times. They went up and they came down, it's what they did. Apparently this human feared them falling out of the sky when they weren't supposed to. Her heart pounded alarmingly fast and Athalaz fed well but he worried for his host.

Worry was a new thing he'd learned in the last season or two. These beings amused and sometimes delighted him with their dreams and thoughts. While he could only feed on the terror of their night fears he could sometimes peek into their other thoughts. He had learned much in this bright new world they had created. He had finally started to learn their new language, so different than the one he and Ubilaz used when they had need to speak words. He had also learned a new word for what these happy people called him; monster.

Monster.

Athalaz did not like that. When he and Ubilaz had spoken of it Ubilaz had whispered his soft laughter and appeared to revel in it. They fed off fear, why not take joy if their very presence helped to feed them. Athalaz had worried at first that something was wrong with him but it was his curiosity that kept him going back to watch the humans night after night. It was that interest that made him start to care about the humans. It was learning that illuminated a void in his life and made him start to yearn for more. So it was that Athalaz started spending more time watching and less time feeding.

Ubilaz had no such interest. Ubilaz had watched and learned as well. Ubilaz felt a different sort of emptiness and he began to feed more to fill it.

[-]

"Dean, check this out," said Sam as he turned his laptop a little in Dean's general direction. The monitor displayed a the front page of the North Mississippi Herald with a bold headline reading "Mysterious Deaths in Scobey Continue". Dean set his beer down on the table and leaned over to skim the article. There had been twelve deaths within the last two months. Four had been fairly elderly. Eight were healthy, fit adults with no particular expectation they'd die suddenly. All had died in their sleep of apparent heart attacks. The first few seemed a coincidence but the sudden rash of deaths seemed too unusual to be random happenstance.

"Yup, Sam, sounds like one of ours. What are you thinking? Witch?"

"Could be. I haven't seen anything to link the people involved yet. Let me do a little more research but I think we'll be headed that way soon."

"Scobey. Sounds familiar... Oh, yeah. Little town south of Oakland, right?"

Sam checked and discovered that was, indeed, the location. "Ok, Dean, and why do you know Scobey?"

"Pie."

"Pie?"

"Yes, pie," answered Dean. "There's this truck stop near the place that makes amazing pie. I say we go!"

Sam just shook his head. Of course. Pie.

[-]

Athalaz looked at the dead human and felt a wrongness. This human would never watch its boxes again. It would never brush its hair. It would never make its loud noises. Athalaz couldn't be sure but he thought the word they used for this feeling in this time and place was _sadness_. He croaked out the strange word in two broken syllables with his quiet rasp of a voice. It sounded just like he felt.

Athalaz looked over where Ubilaz was feeding on a second human. Two humans in the same night? They used to feed once every few days but Ubilaz's hunger seemed to be growing while his caution seemed to be lessening. Athalaz felt the wrongness inside him grow. Sinuously he glided around to that side of the bed to where Ubilaz fed. The human beneath him had begun to flop feebly around in small, jerky movements. Before it could become the sharp, seizing movements that indicated peril for the human Athalaz pulled Ubilaz's hands away.

Ubilaz shrieked defiance and lunged at Athalaz, gnashing teeth bared in anger, his eyes reflecting an animal-like yellow gleam of light. Ubilaz took a swipe with one razor-sharp taloned hand. Athalaz made no attempt to stop him and the swing cut a gash across Athalaz's torso spilling some of his blood. Athalaz made a piteous sound of protest but didn't fight back. He just pointed at the dead human and then at the still-twitching human next to them. Ubilaz looked at both, made a slight hissing noise, then both fled from the house.

Ubilaz was far quicker and reached the woodland sanctuary well before Athalaz. Athalaz had not fed often enough lately and he was weakening.

[-]

"Damnit, Sam. This isn't natural at all. We need to stop this! How do we stop something that we can't track and doesn't appear to have any pattern to it's actions?"

"I don't know, Dean. No hex bags, no sign of a witch, no tracks, nothing at all. We need to wait."

"People are dying, Sam. Don't we have anything?"

A little distractedly, Sam was reading through local news articles when one caught his attention. "Wait, maybe I do. Check this out, there was a death just last night and the wife says she had dreams of devils attacking her in the night."

"Devils? You mean, like, demon activity? There wasn't any sign of that either."

"I don't know, Dean, but it's fresh. We should go look."

The police had already cordoned off the room and were doing their best to console the grieving widow. The only anomaly that turned up was a bit of viscous, oily green ooze smeared on the carpet next to the bed. The police were trying to get a CSI unit from upstate to come and investigate but were having little luck. Dean and Sam posed as FBI agents and the police, a little spooked by the inexplicable string of deaths already, were eager to let them take over.

The ooze didn't conform to any of the known substances they'd expect to find. At a guess, Sam thought it could be blood so he took a sample to do some research on. Later that night he found what would be their best guess.

Sam looked up from the research on his laptop, picked up the tiny vial of presumed blood and watched as it turgidly oozed from side to side as he tilted it. "You know, I think this is blood. It took some digging but the only references I found that came close are the blood of what was listed in proto-Germanic as a 'maron' which came into Old English..."

"Enough with the history lesson Sam, just tell me, what is it?" Dean said, still in a surly mood after yet another killing. His frustration was getting the better of him.

"... as I was saying, it came into Old English as 'mare' as in Night Mare."

Dean looked a little incredulous at that. "You mean, a horse?"

"Well, the link is there but a 'maron' is more of a sort of goblin or imp. Get this though, it's supposed to ride on people's chests while they sleep bringing on bad dreams."

"Bad dreams. Bad enough to cause a heart attack from the sheer fear of it?"

"Given the string of deaths we've seen I'd say that sounds about right. The question is, how do we stop it? Better still, how do we find it? Have you looked at a map?"

Dean sighed heavily. "Yes. There's a whole lot of undeveloped woodland east of here it could be hiding in and we've nothing to track. Any ideas?"

"We know it hunts at night. That's about it. Stake out a place and hope."

"Sammy, there are just over 600 people in this town. We just 'hope' we find the right one?"

"Well, do you have a better idea?"

[-]

Athalaz had come to a decision. Ubilaz had to be stopped. Unfortunately Athalaz was growing weaker daily as he refused to feed so deeply or as often as he once had whereas Ubilaz was growing stronger than ever. Athalaz didn't think he could beat Ubilaz in a fight so he waited and watched.

A few nights later he came across the two strange humans residing in the large red building humans came to stay for a short time. He couldn't read the sign that read "Cattle King Motor Inn" but Athalaz liked the glowing neon lights that hung over the door that flashed the words "vacancy". He kept coming back to watch it and would watch the dreams of the humans within. Athalaz had grown much better at peering into the more pleasant dreams of the humans with all the practice he was getting at it. The dreams of these two men were very different. Even their happier dreams were darker than most humans', particularly the dreams of the shorter one. Athalaz could almost feed off even the happier dreams of that one as they were nearly all tinged with elements of danger and what would be nightmares to any other humans he'd come across. These strange humans worried him but, at the same time, he liked them and he kept coming back.

Eventually the dreams of the one that thought of himself as " _Dean_ " gave him an idea how to finally stop Ubilaz.

The next night Athalaz lead Ubilaz back to the big red building. The room next to the _Dean_ human had a tempting target: one of the younger humans who wasn't quite full grown. They were old enough to have seen enough of their world to have terrors founded in fact rather than fancy but still too young to do anything about those fears. Fears like those were always easier to lock into their minds. There was a larger human in the room too, perhaps the _mother_ of smaller human. Athalaz leaned over the larger human as if to feed and waited for Ubilaz to begin feeding on the smaller as Athalaz knew he would. Once Ubilaz was feeding he would be too engrossed to see what Athalaz did.

Athalaz had picked this particular room not because of the young human, however, that had just been a lucky find. What mattered to Athalaz was the fact that the _Dean_ was right next door. As Ubilaz fed Athalaz slipped away quieter than he ever had before. Athalaz slipped into the _Dean's_ room. He tried to rouse the _Dean_ but was unable to. For all his caution and wariness once the _Dean_ slept he slept deeply. The other would have to do. The other human woke more easily to Athalaz's light but repeated touch and then immediately jumped back with a loud shout.

Sam was reliving the dream of Jess's death. Perhaps all the research into nightmares had finally started triggering his own. He was restless and near waking when he felt a light touch. Dean did not have a light touch when it came to waking him and he was near enough to wakefulness for the anomaly to rouse him quickly.

Sam opened his eyes to a creature of little more than shadowy silhouette. It stood too tall with gangly limbs too thin and it stared at him with glowing, yellow eyes. The last woke him more instantly than anything else could have and he launched himself away from what he initially thought was a demon loudly calling out an incoherent shout to rouse Dean.

Before Dean came to wakefulness the shadowy being fled the room stopping only briefly at the door to look back at Sam with his glowing eyes and, could it be, beckon him to follow?

Sam and Dean, now armed with guns, cautiously trod after the shadow being. They couldn't be sure this was the nightmare but it strained credulity to think there were two different monsters hunting this same tiny town. Soft susurrations came from an open door in the room next to theirs. With no sign of the beast elsewhere it bore investigating. Dean pushed the door the rest of the way to find exactly what they sought.

Within the room not one but two shadow beasts stood. One astride the chest of a teen who was silently writhing in her bed. The other was reaching for it as if to warn it of Dean's approach. Dean took action before the one could warn the other and fired on the one that appeared to be feeding on the girl's dreams. A fervent hope that bullets could actually stop these things preceded two quick shots on the first before training his Colt pistol on the other.

Unfortunately for Dean, Ubilaz had heard the soft sound of the door opening and Dean's too loud footsteps. That broke through his feeding fervor, and as Dean pulled the trigger Ubilaz leaped to one side, rebounding sideways off the wall and launching himself at Dean. Dean's deafening shots tore two chunks out of the wall behind where Ubilaz had been only a fraction of a moment before. If not for Athalaz Dean might well have died at the hands of Ubilaz.

For his part, Athalaz launched himself at Ubilaz. Ubilaz may have been the stronger but Athalaz had been expecting this. His plan had been to draw the _Dean_ in and let him hunt the monsters. He hoped he could get away while the _Dean_ contended with Ubilaz but it was more important now that he prove himself not a "monster" and save these fragile humans from Ubilaz. Athalaz grasped Ubilaz by one leg as his brother flew through the air at the _Dean_. Ubilaz came up short and turned on Athalaz and began a rapid, raking attack even while trying to bite at him.

Dean's third shot went slightly astray as the first beast's sudden rebound off the wall startled him but it worked in Dean's favor. Just as the second beast appeared to also launch itself at Dean his mis-aimed shot actually tracked with it and caught the beast high and slightly to the left in it's chest and it careened into the first beast knocking both to the floor. As the first appeared to think, the second was attacking it, and they turned on each other in a confused, shadowy mess. Dean took what little luck he had and unloaded three more shots into the tangle on the floor before him.

It came to him then that the woman in the room had roused and was screaming at the top of her lungs. She had woken to terrifying gun fire, seen two men who had burst into her room, and knew something unspeakable was writing on the floor next to her daughter's motel bed. Her maternal instincts kicked in. She couldn't mentally contend with _whatever_ was on the floor but an armed gunman she understood. She launched herself Dean before her daughter could come to harm.

Sam had come in behind Dean and had a slightly less reactionary stance on the situation. He was still disturbed that the beast seemed to want him to follow and was trying to sort that out. When the woman launched herself at Dean, Sam halted Dean's reaction. Odds were he wouldn't fire on the woman but as amped up as Dean likely was it was better not to take chances. Then Sam did his best to reassure the woman. He pulled out the fake FBI ID he'd grabbed on his way out of their room, held it up, and as firmly and calmly as he could, tried to get her to understand that he and Dean were not the threat here.

The tumbling mass of shadows had at this point rolled its way over to the far side of the room. Sam scooped the unconscious girl from where she lay on the bed and led the woman from the room. Dean kept his gun trained on the mass as it's movements slowed and he could make out the two forms still locked in struggle. One looked far the worse for wear, the one his bullet had hit, now covered in numerous slashes oozing that slimy green blood. The other was also injured but seemed to be faring slightly better of the two. The weaker one looked Dean squarely in his eyes and Dean could make out a few barely uttered, badly formed words roughly spoken. "Bad" and "Save". The weaker one seemed to be doing it's best to restrain the stronger one but it was clearly a losing battle. Making a judgment call Dean aimed his last round at the stronger one. If he was wrong about this at least he'd only have to face the weaker one and, with luck, Sam should be back any second now.

Dean's gun gave one last, loud bark as the bullet took Ubilaz in the back of the head. Ubilaz fell unmoving across Athalaz's prone form. Athalaz made no move to crawl out but just lay there breathing raggedly as he bled from three gunshot wounds, numerous slashes, and several bites. The dead one had two gunshot wounds and far fewer slashes. Dean took the pause to hastily reload.

Sam came back in and assessed the situation. As Dean trained his gun back on the feebly moving Athalaz Sam carefully approached it. "Sam, what are you doing? You saw how fast those things were. Step back."

"Dean, I don't think this one means us any harm. I think it woke me up on purpose before leading us here."

"Don't be stupid, Sammy. It can probably still rip you to shreds. Don't take chances."

Athalaz didn't understand most of their words but he understood the tone of the words. He lay mostly still. He reached out one hand very slowly towards the one the _Dean_ called _Sam_ and waited. Hesitantly, waiting for any sign of sudden movement, Sam came closer. The eye shine from Athalaz's eyes were ebbing now. Athalaz tried to speak a word, Sam thought it might be "friend" but he wasn't certain with how weak the word was. Sam leaned closer and Athalaz made gentle, tenuous contact with Sam's chest.

In Sam's head an image formed as fast as thought. Then another and yet another. Sam saw images of a large, hideous shadow and knew, somehow, that this was _Mother_. The only good and right thing in a world that wished him only harm. He saw flashes of Athalaz's life in the old country. Saw a terrifying trip across a wide ocean to a new world. Saw scores of years of feeding and guilt. Saw as Athalaz changed from something almost animal to something far more noble. Saw as Athalaz struggled to learn, yearned for sunlight and friendship, and... humanity. A monster who wanted only to be human in the end. A monster who ached for all the harm he had caused, never intentionally. A monster whose final choice was to see the monster his brother truly was and to do the only thing he could to bring one more measure of peace and safety to the humans that so amused and delighted him. Then the images faded and Sam felt the hand drop away from his chest to make an almost soundless whisper as it fell, lifeless to the floor.

"Sam, are you ok?"

"Yeah, Dean. I am." Sam sighed. "I'm... ok."

It wasn't long before the hotel management arrived with a shotgun in hand and the frightened mother behind him. Sam held up the fake FBI ID and continued the ruse. They explained away the situation as best as they could and ushered people away from the room claiming it was a crime scene and they'd already called it in. Then they set about the task of trying to clean up the mess. It was nearly dawn.

As the sun rose the mess largely took care of itself. As the rays of the sun fell on first Ubilaz then Athalaz their shadowy skin started to evaporate into smoke disappearing like the last lingering vestiges of a bad dream in the morning light.

Hours later as they drove out of town Sam asked Dean "Now what?"

"Pie."

"Of course. Pie. I should have known."

Sam sighed quietly again. He had much to think on. He had half the memories of a monster that was not a monster still playing in his mind's eye. Quietly he whispered a single word to himself. _Athalaz_.


End file.
